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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

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Rae Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California, on April 13, 1947, and grew up in San Diego. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied with Denise Levertov, and a master's degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University.

She has published numerous books of poetry, including Itself (Wesleyan University Press, 2015); Just Saying (Wesleyan University Press, 2013); Money Shot (Wesleyan University Press, 2011); Versed (Wesleyan University Press, 2009), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010; Next Life (Wesleyan University Press, 2007), selected by the New York Times as one of the most notable books of 2007; Up to Speed (Wesleyan University Press, 2004), a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award in Poetry; Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001), also a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award; The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001); Made To Seem (Sun & Moon Press, 1995); and The Invention of Hunger (Tuumba Press, 1979).

Part of the first generation of Language poets on the West Coast, her work has been praised for syntax that borders on everyday speech while grappling with questions of deception and distortion in both language and consciousness. About her poems, Robert Creeley has described “a quiet and enabling signature,” adding, “I don’t think there’s another poet writing who is so consummate in authority and yet so generous to her readers and company alike.”

In the preface to her selected poems, Veil, Ron Silliman describes her work as "the literature of the anti-lyric, those poems that at first glance appear contained and perhaps even simple, but which upon the slightest examination rapidly provoke a sort of vertigo effect as element after element begins to spin wildly toward more radical...possibilities."

Armantrout's poetry has been widely anthologized, appearing in Language Poetries, (New Directions), In The American Tree, (National Poetry Foundation), Postmodern American Poetry (W.W. Norton), Poems for the Millennium, Vol. 2 (University of California Press), American Women Poets of the 21st Century (Wesleyan University Press), and several editions of Best American Poetry. She is also the author of a prose memoir, True, which was published by Atelos in 1998.

She has taught writing for almost twenty years at the University of California, San Diego.

Chirality

Rae Armantrout, 1947

If I didn't need
to do anything,
would I?
Would I oscillate
in two
or three dimensions?
Would I summon
a beholder
and change chirality
for "him"?
A massless particle
passes through the void
with no resistance.
Ask what it means
to pass through the void.
Ask how it differs
from not passing.

Rae Armantrout

by this poet

Sad, fat boy in pirate hat.
Long, old, dented,
copper-colored Ford.
How many traits
must a thing have
in order to be singular?
(Echo persuades us
everything we say
has been said at least once
before.)
Two plump, bald men
in gray tee-shirts
and tan shorts
are walking

Quick, before you die,
describe
the exact shade
of this hotel carpet.
What is the meaning
of the irregular, yellow
spheres, some
hollow,
gathered in patches
on this bedspread?
If you love me,
worship
the objects
I have caused
to represent me
in my absence.
*
Over and over
tiers
of houses spill

Local anchors list the ways
viewers might enjoy tomorrow.
One says, “Get some great....”, but
that seems like a stretch.
The other snickers, meaning,
“Where were you going with that?”
Like you thought
*
Like you could defend

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If I didn't need
to do anything,
would I?
Would I oscillate
in two
or three dimensions?
Would I summon
a beholder
and change chirality
for "him"?
A massless particle
passes through the void
with no resistance.
Ask what it means
to pass through the void.
Ask how it differs
from not

If I didn't need
to do anything,
would I?
Would I oscillate
in two
or three dimensions?
Would I summon
a beholder
and change chirality
for "him"?
A massless particle
passes through the void
with no resistance.
Ask what it means
to pass through the void.
Ask how it differs
from not

If I didn't need
to do anything,
would I?
Would I oscillate
in two
or three dimensions?
Would I summon
a beholder
and change chirality
for "him"?
A massless particle
passes through the void
with no resistance.
Ask what it means
to pass through the void.
Ask how it differs
from not